paying my dues

The best things in life aren't free.

Being a respected journalist is far from free, much less cheap. I spent countless hours living in the journalism classroom in high school, trying to learn InDesign and Photoshop. When I got to college, I joked about moving a bed into Moudy South at TCU so I could truly eat, sleep and breathe journalism.

From the moment I realized that I was meant to work in this business, I've been warned that I would have to pay my dues.

There was the summer after my freshman year when I worked as a news intern for WOAI-TV in San Antonio. I was only one class into my major, yet somehow managed to land an internship for a TV station in a top 50 market. Most journalism internships are unpaid and this was no exception; I actually paid for the college credit hour so I could be the low man on the totem pole.

While I was never asked to get coffee, I had my other moments. I was sent out with a photographer to "drop off" the Blue Plate Award - translation: hand it out on camera. I didn't know this until we got to the restaurant and I managed to award it to the manager upside down. Then there was the big rig spill outside Bexar County that sent the newsroom into a tizzy on my first day working the assignments desk. I somehow managed to find a Red Cross spokesperson for a phone interview; it still amazes me that she was on-air with one of the reporters in less than five minutes. For all of my rough moments, I still think that summer was completely worth it.

Because of my natural drive to overachieve, I've consistently managed to be the youngest person working on nearly any journalism staff I've been part of - consider the fact I rushed through college in three years. Being the baby of my paper's news staff now sometimes means writing the stories that may not necessarily appeal to everyone on staff. In the four months since I started my job, I've covered water resources extensively - which scares me since I honestly have no idea what I'm talking about.

Maybe that's what paying your journalism dues is all about - learning to step outside your comfort zone and doing the scary work. Whenever I find myself assigned to a story that seems rather intimidating, I try to remember how hard I had to work to get here.

I'm paying my dues because I know one day, all of this work will pay off.